These are busy times for Labour Party members, including those from London: it's conference week, a man called Ed's been making a big speech and BlackBerrys will be bursting with messages. Even so, I'm starting to wonder at the lack of Labour people prepared to speak up about their party's mayoral campaign in Tower Hamlets.

In recent weeks I've talked privately to many Labour Party members with deep knowledge of the borough, some of whom have been very generous with their time. I've gathered lots of invaluable background knowledge and heard all sorts of stories, many of them depressing and some of them frightening. One person called the Tower Hamlets party "a cesspit". None, though, have wanted to speak on the record.

The poisonous atmosphere around the mayoral contest made that understandable. And now that a mayoral candidate has at last been (controversially) chosen I imagine no one wants to risk saying the wrong thing at the start of what will need to be a skillfully managed campaign. I should add that Lutfur's Rahman's team has been no more forthcoming: assertive emails arrive from apparent supporters but none accept invitations to give me a call. Yet it's a week since Labour's National Executive Committee replaced Rahman with Helal Abbas, and with polling day barely three weeks away the near-silence from Labour quarters is starting to feel a little strange.

There's been one notable exception. Yesterday I received an overture to become a Facebook friend, only for this to be quickly withdrawn. My suitor got cold feet because I'd reported the views of Tory Assembly Member Andrew Boff on issues of some importance to the running of Tower Hamlets. The message read:

Do you mind rejecting the friend request I just made. I read your article and completely lost respect. What's the point of offering an opinion from someone who knows nothing of this area; nothing of Islam and nothing of the Labour party? Maybe you think you're being impartial, but I don't see why you don't go and find someone from Yimbuctoo (sic?) to offer a completely pointless opinion. We're trying to fight an election here that will decide once and for all whether secular and transparent politics can exist in a multi-cultural borough and we don't need your idiotic interference.

This person has since apologised for their angry tone and also wondered if I had an ulterior motive for posting Boff's opinion. I've accepted the apology, but can assure readers that my sole reason for giving space to Boff's view is that as a Conservative London Assembly member who "shadows" East London matters for the Tory group, looks favourably on the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum of Europe and is, of course, supporting the Conservatives' mayoral candidate, I consider his perspective worth reporting.

It seems my correspondent is involved in fighting Labour's campaign, not least online. The characterisation of the mayoral election as deciding "once and for all whether secular and transparent politics can exist in a multi-cultural borough" therefore seems significant. Is this the central theme of Labour's campaign? Does their candidate personify it? How are he and his Labour colleagues going about making that case? I like the sound of it. I'm all ears.